Member-only story
Fellow liberals, be careful who you cancel
I am liberal. Increasingly, as political tensions escalate, I’ve noticed other liberals imply that the world would be better off without conservatives.
This assumption reflects in how we tend to deal with people who express opposing beliefs online:
- Call out
- Condemn
- Cancel
Our social cues and biological programming tell us that this is the right thing to do. Like cavemen who sense a predator, we publicly point out the offenders, label them as dangerous, and then seek to eliminate them from the public arena.
We call this “accountability.”
The risks for this approach may seem small. In the short term, we feel victorious. We enjoy a sense of self-righteous solidarity with our tribe over having ousted a perceived threat.
But social media gives a skewed sense of reality. The costs of “canceling” are greater than they seem.
On the internet, anyone “problematic” is just a disposable avatar.
In real life, conservatives make important contributions that we all value and depend on.
